Alfonso Prat-Gay, Co-chair of the Inter-American Dialogue Board of Directors, joined Carlos Pagni on Odisea Argentina to discuss his new role at the Dialogue, the ideological polarization across the Americas, and the debate over reforming the Central Bank of Argentina.
Prat-Gay began by describing the central role the Inter-American Dialogue plays as a bipartisan channel between the United States and Latin America through the region’s democratic transition. He explained how that founding premise grew into today’s roughly one-hundred-member institution, including eighteen former presidents and private sector leaders. He argued the mission is more urgent than ever, as Washington drifts from bipartisanship under Trump and the hemisphere splits between opposing models, from Carney’s Canada to knife-edge elections in Colombia and Peru.
COMMENTS FROM PRAT-GAY:
“It was founded in 1982, at a particular moment when democracies didn’t yet exist across the region and the dictatorships were about to fall. A group of people had the idea that what the coming democratic era would need was productive dialogue between the United States and the rest of the Americas.”
“What we see is ideological division across countries, and a very deep ideological division within countries. This isn’t something we’ve really seen since the end of the dictatorships in Latin America, and that’s what makes this a very fitting moment to take on this role.”
“Venezuela is a central chapter for the region, and now also for Trump’s foreign policy. This past Sunday, a dialogue toward a political transition in Venezuela was supposed to begin, but it didn’t. There was a phone call between Delcy Rodríguez’s brother and Dinorah, the former president of the assembly, and they said, well, we’re going to meet and start discussing it. Marco Rubio says he’s behind that effort. We don’t know for sure, but I plan to dedicate a good deal of my time at the Dialogue to helping find a solution in Venezuela.”
“The independence of the Central Bank is a barrier to keep whoever is in government from overriding what’s held there. In Perón’s era that meant the gold reserves sitting in the Central Bank, and later it was simply the printing press.”
